Welcome to another week.
Very much in the vein of the nation’s Independent Inquiry Into Child Sexual Abuse, The British Association of Social Workers (BASW) has just confirmed that it will be launching a year-long investigation into adoption and the practice surrounding it.
The inquiry will be managed by a steering group of adult adoptees (though we hope this will include young men and women from the age of 16 for more up to date analyses from this group), birth parents, adoptive parents, senior law professionals, academics and social workers.
The BASW led investigation hopes to see how the government’s current policies are affecting adoption, like the 26 week timescale for adoptions to be completed and whether a lack of resources is preventing the child welfare sector from doing its best. It will invite everyone affected by the adoption process to come forward and share their thoughts.
This inquiry is likely to raise some interesting issues. Other than government policy relating to court timescales and a lack of funds to fully equip social work departments, it is likely that a debate around Forced Adoption will be had, as well as whether adoption is still being overused at a time when other, perhaps far better, options are available.
If you would like to get involved or share your experience, please contact adoptionenquiry@basw.co.uk
Our question this week then, is just this: do you think adoption practice in the UK is ethical?
Researching Reform 
Adoption that is contested and subsequently followed by forced adoption can in my opinion NEVER be ethical or justified.Removing a baby at birth ,followed by forced adoption when the mother is screaming to keep it can I repeat, NEVER be justified and is in fact a crime against humanity for which perpetrators should be judged and the guilty punished.
Forced adoption is based on lies from the start (the fake birth certificate) to finish (the false name on the grave) and is a disgrace that should not be tolerated one moment longer !
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I think an investigation in to long term foster care should be a subject of debate as well as forced adoption.
Are children really better off in foster care than with their loving families who have done nothing wrong?
Just lately I have read so many things about children getting put in to foster care and being abused and killed by their foster parents, also children being abused and killed by their parents that the social services are failing to stop. Recently the story that has upset me the most is about the 21month old little girl that got stamped on and killed by her mother. Derbyshire social services failed this little girl so much. A few months after this happened Derbyshire social services took 2 of my boys from their happy,loving family home away from their brothers and all the family they knew. I had multi agency meetings and no health professionals or teachers had any concerns for my children who were loved and very well looked after. What were the social services doing while this little girl was being abused and killed, probably they were to busy taking children away from their loving parents and family homes. Social services are too busy causing emotional halm to innocent children and their families to help the children that really need saving from such cruel acts of abuse and even death.
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Absolute not! The amount of money spent on fostering and adoption is unbelievable, especially with all the services involved!
The money would often be better spent on helping the family of the child!
Forced adoption is so damaging and unethical!
I see parents struggling with PTSD, God knows what their children go through! We all know it’s built into the economy as a business!
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Reblogged this on World4Justice : NOW! Lobby Forum..
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I speak as one who was adopted and also who has lost his only child (not through adoption but via the ‘Family’ Court). Forced adoption is repugnant to most caring people but there are cases where adoption would be the best outcome for the child. Wherever possible, that child should remain with the natural family even if the birth parents cannot keep the child, if grandparents or aunts/uncles can do it then they should. I have never had a problem with being adopted, but always hankered after knowing my true roots and finally did so nearly twenty years ago. It was an emotional and happy reunion for both sides, but there’s no doubt I was, personally, advantaged by being adopted. It’s not always bad or wrong, though it often is.
Forced adoption is abhorrent, and no better than the ‘Magdalen Laundries’ practiced by the Catholic Church in Ireland up to the 1990’s. Young single women and girls who got pregnant (often by a family member) brought shame on to the family, and were despatched to work at these places until they gave birth. Shortly after birth, their babies were taken from them, resulting in desperate and prolonged suffering to countless mothers, and often harm to the children too. This practice is now looked upon with revulsion and has, quite rightly, been stopped. But forced adoption continues in the UK and there’s really not much difference. The sadistic nuns have been replaced by heartless social workers, the Family Priest signing off the papers by a Family Court Judge, the shame and heartbreak are just the same.
Shame on these people and their inhuman cohorts. It is certainly time for a debate, and one that leads to a radical re-think, pronto.
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Reblogged this on No Punishment without Crime or Bereavement without Death!.
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I was involved in care proceedings some years ago; fortunately, at 11 & 12, my children were too old for adoption – I dread to think what they outcome would have been had they been under 4. Between them, the sws, the guardian and the child psychologist involved must have spent the equivalent of weeks or months thinking of what lies they could tell the court to remove my children. I also dread to think how many children were really at risk of abuse, neglect or death that SS could have saved while this was happening. Despite what SS was originally set up for, the real intent is to ignore children in dire need of their help while splitting up families unnecessarily thus causing the emotional harm they falsely accuse the parents of.
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Its clearly not ethical – there are so many terrible stories out there. The question is why and how is it happening? What are the motives and ideology behind it?
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Adoption practice is most certainly not ethical!
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Adoption (forced) is big business and SS get a lot of money from the government to help them. Has anyone wondered why the increase? One reason is that there’s no stigma anymore to women having babies out of wedlock so there’s a shortage and forced adoption is the solution, sws coming up with ridiculous and false reasons to remove the child, often within hours – or even minutes – of birth. Possible future emotional harm is one. Mothers having babies are losing them despite having done nothing wrong while being able to keep their older children. It takes a certain type of sw to do this job.
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